What We Share

I have not always been this way, living alone in a small apartment at the top of an old building, but though I have lost nearly everything, I still have words I can share. It’s the young woman. The one who moved into the apartment next to mine, she has helped me remember what is important.

At first, when she came into my life, I was upset. You see, she is a music teacher, and her students are all beginners. She tries to teach them to play the cello. The sounds come through my kitchen wall, starting in the morning and not stopping until the afternoon. I tried to ignore it, but how? Finally, I knocked. She answered, months ago, back in the fall, and I explained that I was her neighbor and that I could hear the students playing all day. I explained while I stood in the hallway and while she stood in her doorway. When I finished, she looked at me, and I waited. Then she invited me inside. “I was having tea. Please come in,” she said.

So what could I do? I had to go in.

Her apartment was even smaller than mine, and she was the only one that shared a wall with my apartment. So I was the only one who could hear the sounds. She brought me through the living room, which had two plain, wooden chairs and two music stands, and into her kitchen where she poured me a cup of tea. She said, “I’m sorry about the music, but there’s nothing I can do.”

I stared at my hands. Her pronunciation was uncertain. So I asked her which country she had come from, and she told me, and I nodded and said, “Brooklyn has many immigrants from your country.” And then I asked her, “Can you afford a studio or some other place to teach from?”

She shook her head and said “No, no. I cannot afford another place.”  

And I asked her, “When you can afford another place, will you stop teaching here?”

She answered, “Yes. I have always planned on having a place to teach.” Then we were quiet and we looked at the tabletop and the teacups.

Outside, the noise from the traffic suddenly seemed loud. Seventh Avenue, a Friday night. Even at the top of the building, the fifth floor, there was noise of horns, noise of police sirens, and even car alarms. Then she said, “I thought that as long as I was not as loud as the road, it would be all right.”

I nodded, and I said, “It is funny how I don’t notice the other noise anymore.” And then, maybe because I’ve always been a bit of a fool, or perhaps because it has been so long since anyone had sat quietly and shared a cup of tea with me, I said something foolish. “I guess I will get used to the sound of your students.” Suddenly she smiled and the sadness in her face was gone.  She reached across the table and took my hands and held them, my hands that had not been held in so long. She said, “Mr. Steve, thank you for your sacrifice!” And her funny way of saying my name and use of the word sacrificemade me laugh, and that is how we met, and that is how my life started to change.

At first, all was as it had been. The day after talking to Lynn — that is her name — was a Saturday. A weekend. But instead of having a day off from her work, Lynn had more students than normal. I heard them knocking on her door and then I heard all the sour, broken notes that were far away from any music.

I love string music. And who doesn’t love cello music?

When I was a boy, before I lost my country and lost my family, before the wars, I had wanted to learn to play a musical instrument. But that was like wishing for borders to open and soldiers to leave. Wishes that were not answered. So that Saturday, as I sat trying not to listen to the sounds through my wall, I paced and thought I would have to tell Lynn that teaching music could not be done from her apartment. But I thought of how she had quietly accepted my earlier complaint and how I had then agreed to get used to the sound, and as I paced, I realized that I could not face her again to complain.

So I walked out of my apartment and started down to the floor where the building superintendent lived. I would explain it to him, and then he could say that it was not me who was complaining. That was my plan as I went down the steps, but I did not do it. I have lived long because of luck and strength, and the opposite of luck is deceit, and the opposite of strength is to be a coward. I could not hide behind authority to have a bad message delivered from any voice but my own. Halfway down the stairs, I knew that I could not turn Lynn in. I had given her permission. True, it was in a moment when her politeness had taken advantage of me, but I had to live with what I had done to myself.

So I walked out of the building and up the avenue, angry and muttering at myself for losing my bit of peace, which I had willingly given away for a cup of tea. As I walked though, I calmed down. It was a perfect October day, crisp and blue. The sidewalks were filled with sounds of people talking.  Brooklyn is a good place to live. Everyone is different, but we are still the same. I hear Hebrew and Yiddish on the corners, also Korean, Spanish, and Chinese, but mostly I hear Brooklyn and the swearing that is not swearing.

And as I walked, I felt good that I could still walk. And as I walked, I felt good that I could still see the color of the sky and the sharp lines of the buildings. And as I walked, I felt good that I could still hear well enough to know the difference between noise and music. And as I walked, I became happy that I could feel.

In Prospect Park, I sat on a bench and remained there for maybe an hour. “Okay,” I said. “It is late afternoon now.” Then I got up and walked back to my building, hoping that her daily lessons would be over.

A small package was at my door. There was a notecard that read, “Thank you,” with a perfectly folded origami cello.

The next day, Sunday, I was prepared to leave again to walk and sit, but there was no noise, no lessons. Then there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, there was Lynn. “I have prepared food,” she said. “Would you be pleased to have an early lunch with me?”

I have lived in this building for twenty years, and no one has invited me to eat with them. Inviting neighbors to share meals is not something New Yorkers usually do, and maybe it is not a thing Americans typically do, but it is something refugees do. And even as long as I have been a New Yorker, an American, I have somehow always stayed a refugee. So I understood. Once you have run and hid and run again, you will always remember. And if you have been turned in, hurt, and cheated, you also learn both to be careful and, at the same time, the opposite: you learn to recognize honesty. As I had two days before. It is true, perhaps I was taken advantage of, but this day, this Sunday of no lessons, I could not see any risk. “Yes,” I answered. “I would enjoy eating with you.”

The food she cooked was good, and neither of us talked as we ate. Then she poured us cups of tea again, and I asked, “No lessons today?”

“No lessons,” she replied. “I teach Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.”

I smiled and said, “Good! Three days of quiet!”

And she laughed and said, “Yes, my students are most terrible, but they will improve quickly, you will hear, I promise.”

“And your other days?” I asked. “What do you do then?”

She told me she worked in a restaurant, but not on Sundays.

“Do you have family here?” I asked.

“No.” She said, “I came alone.”

“Your cello?” I asked. “How long have you had it?”

And she looked down and her face went sad, and she explained that she had sold her cello to get to America.  And the cello she used now was not hers, it was rented. “It does not play well,” she said. “Someday, I will have a place to teach my students and a cello of my own again.”

She said this, and I looked out the window at the bright sky and the few clouds. As something that happens to all of us, not just old men, I was suddenly someplace else. Someplace I had been a long time before.

I was at sea, on the water, and the war was over. I was twenty years old. We had rounded past Gibraltar, and we were heading towards Haifa. The Mediterranean was blue and flat like perfect glass. Our Italian ship sliced the water like a morning swimmer in a sun-warmed pool. I was part of the human cargo of two thousand refugees. The upper decks of the ship were crowded with us.

There was much talking and many conversations about what to expect, and the conversations were hopeful. All of us had escaped some kind of horror, and no one wanted to talk about what they were running from. Instead, the talk was about what we were expecting. The talk was of dreams.

There was a man about fifteen years older than me, and he and I began talking with each other. He wanted to open an Italian restaurant in this new country of Arabs and displaced Jews. We were talking in Italian. So I asked if, like me, he was a Jew. No, he said he wasn’t.

I did not ask him how he came to be on that boat of refugees, and he did not ask me. Instead, I asked him how he would start this restaurant. Did he know people?

“No, no one,” he answered.

Did he have any money?

“No, no, no money,” he said.

Perhaps he had brought pots and pans and other cooking supplies and could start by having a stand on the street.

“Oh, no, no,” he said.  Like me, he had nothing with him except his clothing.

So I asked, “How will you start a business with nothing?”

And he looked carefully at me before he answered. Then he spoke slowly so I could understand and know that he was not making a joke. He said, “I shall not be starting with nothing. I shall be starting my business with you, and we will learn together how to do things in this new country.”

Then we were both quiet, leaning on the rail of the boat. I knew he was serious, and I knew somehow that such an offer made better sense than the war, better sense than the burnt fields and houses, better sense than all the politicians and their lies.

After several quiet minutes, I said, “I will start a restaurant with you.”  And we shook hands there, and Primo — that was his name — said to me that in a few days we would be in a new land where we would learn, and work, and start over. And we did. We learned, and we worked, and we had a restaurant. But that is another story, almost a lifetime ago.

I blinked, and I was no longer back with Primo. Instead, I was sitting at a table with Lynn in a small kitchen in her Brooklyn apartment. And she was quiet, looking at me in the way store clerks sometimes do after I’ve waited in line but have not reached fast enough for my wallet, being with my thoughts more than I was being with the trivial matters of living.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of another time.”  

But Lynn, unlike how the store clerks can make me feel old, smiled and said, “I am often thinking of other times, like today,”  she continued, “I went outside and thought I was dreaming. I could smell the ocean, and it reminded me of home.” She pointed up in the air and went on. “I looked up and there was a seabird in the sky between the buildings. When it was gone, I still looked,” and she laughed and held both her hands over her suddenly smiling face, and said, “Boys on the sidewalk came by and asked, ‘Lady, you, okay?’  I was standing with no movement, looking up. You see, I was dreaming, I’d forgotten where I was.”  

Then she said, “Let me play for you. It will explain better.”

She got her cello and sat down, the cello which she told me was no good. And she played.

Without expecting or trying, I saw. I saw where she had traveled across the water. I could see the ocean; I could hear the waves. I felt the distance she had come, and I could almost feel the wind, the wind that carries birds, their wings held still and firm.

Even for me, a man who has outlived my friends and most of my dreams, to suddenly be taken to another world by four strings and a bow was a bit frightening.

Lynn finished playing, and she said, “I hope you enjoyed. I tried to play my story.”

“Your students are fortunate,” I answered, and added, “I just wish they could play as well as you,” and then we both laughed.

We talked a little bit more, then I stood up and thanked her for inviting me to lunch, and I left.

I went out to the avenue, and I walked. This time I was not muttering. Instead, Lynn’s music was with me. It was with me as I saw traffic go by. It was in the rhythms of my feet. It was in the beating of my heart. It was in the longing that I still carry. I will tell you something now. Living many years does not take away longing. The longing for the happiness of building a good life, or the happiness of quietly remembering.

Lynn, because of her students and because of our shared wall, has taken away my peace but is now giving me back something better. It was like my time with Primo in a land of dust and salt, him saying to me, “They will love our pasta, and they will drink our wine,” making me smile and forget my troubles. How we worked together then! Carrying pallets of bricks, sleeping outside, laboring together, and saving our money, and how, against the odds, we made impossible things happen.

Now I have learned some of Lynn’s story. A person with talent who is in a strange land. She escaped and brought her gifts with her. There are people like her all about us, but most of the time no one sees or hears.

Lynn will soon be renting a studio to teach from. She becomes happy when she talks with me about her plans. She also tells me about the friends that she has made these past few months. She speaks with me and we have tea, each of us holding our cups in two hands, sipping slowly. Then she says, “Let me hear what you have learned.”

You will have guessed what happened. You will know that I went to Lynn and asked her if she could teach me as a beginner. You must also know that she did not hesitate. It too, seemed impossible. First, I had to find a way to rent a cello, and then my hands, which had been idle for years, had to begin to move again.

These were small things, though. Harder was the difficulty of listening to my attempts at playing and knowing how much work it would be to turn noise into music. But you must know that I have not given up. And there are moments when my right hand, which moves the bow, and my left hand, which touches the strings, now work together. 

And the sounds through the wall? The noises have started becoming music. All of us students are learning, and for a lucky, short while, we are traveling together with our teacher and no longer alone.